Life Preservers
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mike Janssen
Vestar promotes the events on its Web sites, with signage throughout its properties and via print and radio media partners, says Denise Hart, vice president of marketing. “We've been extremely successful with them — they bring a huge amount of traffic and garner a lot of media attention,” she says. “It's exciting.” Vestar has also turned temporary spaces into art galleries to increase traffic.
Levin Management has screened outdoor movies at its centers and tried out other promotions as well. The company capitalized on another economic crunch — rising fuel prices — by giving away gas cards at Capitol Plaza in Ewing, N.J.
To increase traffic and keep centers busier at night, Levin has sought to build restaurants and add pad sites to properties. Municipalities have proven supportive of pad-site development and have reduced parking requirements to aid the growth, says Harding of Levin Management.
Similarly, the opening of a host of new restaurants at PREIT's Plymouth Meeting Mall — P.F. Chang's, Redstone Grill, Dave and Buster's and California Pizza Kitchen — spurred a promotional campaign financed by the owner and aimed at nearby office workers, who received offers of discounts and freebies.
“We'll do the same sort of thing for tenants who are struggling,” PREIT's Coradino says. “We're focused on trying to find ways to drive traffic and sales to retailers that are going through a difficult time.” Another promotional campaign focused on an Irish pub, where the owner targeted male visitors in an attempt to bring them to the bar for Monday night football showings.
Visitors to Plymouth Meeting will notice a few other gambits PREIT has deployed, such as its new valet-parking program. Valets recently parked 500 cars in a week, including a Ferrari and a Maserati — which suggests to Coradino that the program is achieving its goal of drawing customers with money to spend at the mall's retail outlets.
“It's our first-ever,” he says of the program. “That's driving the right kind of customer to the property.”
After leaving their cars in a valet's care, Plymouth Meeting shoppers who stop to study a mall directory might find themselves approached by security guards. Not to worry — the guards have been retrained for double duty as friendly “ambassadors.” PREIT now pays more for what Coradino calls a “higher caliber” of security guards, who are trained to help shoppers who need directions or are lugging around heavy loads of packages.
“Our business has really changed dramatically,” Coradino says of his company's efforts. “We've got to really step outside the box and be more than just a place to shop.”
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